Breaking & Entering Bourbon

We love whiskey. And on occasion, we love stealing it.

With Breaking & Entering Bourbon, our plunder is your pleasure. To make B&E, Dave and Lance visited some of Kentucky’s most venerable bourbon distilleries and brought several hundred barrels back to blend at our own distillery.

Plenty of spirits producers source spirits from elsewhere, then blend and bottle them under their own label and hope that you don’t notice.

We’re gonna tell it to you straight. Our 30+ years of artisan distillation experience have earned us credibility as craft distillers, and we aim to be worthy of your trust.

We stole this bourbon, yes. But we did it because we see blending as an art form in and of itself, and we think we’ve got a pretty good knack for it. Breaking & Entering is not a St. George distillate, but you can taste our influence in every sip.

THE PROCESS

One day while sampling through our own whiskey barrels, we got to thinking about the fun we could have sampling barrels at other distilleries. We started talking about our favorite bourbons, and how they distinguished themselves from a taste perspective. We started imagining what would happen if we had free license to select barrels—with markedly different characteristics, at different ages—from the bourbon distilleries we loved most. Could we take what we loved about those bourbons and make them a “super bourbon” that was even greater than the sum of its parts?

We reckoned we could. And before we knew it, we were plotting a barrel heist.

Dave and Lance soon found themselves deep in the rickhouses of several Kentucky distilleries. They selected nearly 400 choice barrels, then brought their plunder back to our distillery in California, where Dave got to work sampling through our haul and analyzing each barrel’s characteristics.

Then came the experiments. Dave’s not-unenviable task was to identify complementary flavors from individual casks (ranging 5–8 years in age) and blend them into a layered bourbon that revealed the best of what each barrel had to offer. The result? A criminally delicious bourbon with a storied Kentucky pedigree that would’ve been impossible for any one distillery to produce on its own.

Well-rounded and nicely balanced, with prominent spice… soft fruit… and toasted nuts, all on a bed of caramel. Very versatile: mature enough for pleasurable sipping… youthful enough to add zing to a cocktail.—Whisky Advocate

Many layers of flavor and complexity, but also brightness and vibrancy. — 1001 Whiskies You Must Taste Before You Die

A rare treat. The finish goes on and on. — Foodista

SPECS

Format: 750ml
ABV: 43%
Availability: On hold as of September 2014. For more details on future availability, see here.